[WS:] Your response surprises me. It indicates that you either did not read what I wrote, or that you are incapable or unwilling to see the situation outside the sclerotic Left narrative that treats all popular movements as justified, if not noble, reaction against US imperialism and its proxies.
I clearly argued that as I see it, the popularity of islamic radicalism has a very different root causes, defense of male warrior honor, aptly identified in Graeber's book. Of course, islamic clerics and assorted shysters want to cast it in different terms, as a "blowback" against Western imperialism, and the echo chamber on the western left parrots these claims. I think however that these claims are a bunch of crap, a PR campaign to cover up the extremely retrograde nature of this "movement" (if this term is even justified here.) The utterly bogus nature of these claims can be demonstrated by quoting a Syrian activist who observed that the pools of Syrian blood spilled in the civil war did not provoke any reaction from these guys, but the bunch of cartoons and a poorly made "film" noone heard of before had them run amok in the streets.
This is all that there is to it. I see these guys as contemptible males who treat women and "infidels" as instruments of asserting their wounded warrior honor through humilliaton and clinging to clerics and assorted shysters who provide them with religious justification. There is nothing political about them. End of story.
Now, this has nothing to do with imperialism, state autocracy, or the conduct of wars. Contrary to what you assert, I was quite clear that I do not absolve CIA actions resulting in civilian deaths. If that is what you believe, I suspect that you either did not understand what I wrote or chose to discredit it for ideological reasons.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."